


Weekend

by swimmingfox



Series: Potential [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bachelorette Party, Brighton - Freeform, Curry, Dancing, F/M, Fish & Chips, Fluff and Angst, Hen weekend, Karaoke, M/M, Modern AU, No philosophy, PHEW - Freeform, Potential continues, Seaside, Skinny Dipping, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Stag weekend, UK - Freeform, UK slang, beach party, everyone sings, pub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-15 23:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7244044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/pseuds/swimmingfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stag and hen weekend in the 'Potential' series! Set in Brighton, UK. WHO COULD IT BE?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Curry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junojelli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junojelli/gifts).



> I couldn’t get junojelli’s idea of an awkward weekend in Brighton out of my head. In fact, that started this whole new set of ficlets off including the last one. So it’s all her fault.

_'There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life,' said Spider. 'These things are wine, women and song'..._

_'Curry’s nice too,' pointed out Fat Charlie._

_― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys_

***

**Sandor**

‘Christ on a crumbling cross. What am I doing here?’

‘Well, right now, pal, you’re looking like you might chuck up your second poppadum.’ Bronn was never one for fancy language. A pragmatist. That was why they were mates. He leaned over on his elbows and eyed Sandor with his usual wryness. ‘Are you going to?’

‘Going to what?’ Sandor said.

‘Chuck up your second poppadum. Because I reckon I might cut this one short if so and find some better company for the weekend. I wasn’t expecting vomiting until a lot later in the night.’

Sandor took a deep breath. And another. ‘No.’

‘Good lad.’ Bronn winked at him. ‘Then get that jalfrezi down you. We’ve got places to be.’

Sandor sighed the sort of sigh that could cause dustclouds. ‘Aye. Ok.’

It hardly made any sense that he was here. In Brighton. For the weekend. Because this just wasn’t any weekend away. 

It had stayed a proposal, that night at Lysa’s wedding almost a year ago, Sansa off her face on mead and talking nonsense, or so he had mostly thought. But she had woken up the next morning and rather more shyly reminded him of what she’d said. And slowly, they’d talked about it, and slowly, it became an engagement. 

‘Bloody hell, cheer up.’

Sandor looked at Bronn, who was swiping a peshwari naan around his plate with expert ease. 

‘Isn’t this supposed to be a happy occasion and all that?’ Bronn said, glancing up at him.

‘Can’t we just head back?’

‘What, to London?’ Bronn shook his head. ‘No chance in hell. You asked me to organise your bloody stag do.’ He leaned over the table and pointed his last remaining bit of naan at him. ‘So you’re going to get what you’re given.’

***

**Sansa**

‘I am going to be sick,’ said Sansa, holding her stomach.

‘Not yet, beeeatch,’ said Arya. ‘You haven’t even started drinking.’

‘I’ve had two glasses of champagne.’

‘That doesn’t count. They’re just bubbles. You were basically drinking air.’

‘It’s fine, Sansa,’ said Meera, holding a 1950s jive-dancing dress up to her own shoulders. ‘You take your time.’

Sansa had loyally asked Arya to be on hen weekend duties and had subsequently thanked all seven gods she could think of when her sister had done the sensible thing and roped Meera in, claiming an aversion to all things organised. 

Bristol, their home town, had hen parties every weekend, which turned the high street into a horror-filled carnage of pink sashes and inflatable penises. Hordes of women would screech along the main roads, causing the same alarm that would be instigated by a panicking stampede of cattle. This was all going to be much more classy. Arya, doing graphic design at Brighton University, had said that this was the place to be. Meera had found them an Airbnb apartment with a sea view and had so far organised a champagne high tea out, a slightly chilly stroll along the pier to play arcade games, and a cupcake-baking workshop back at theirs. 

‘Nice, babe,’ said Missy to Meera, as she painted her nails silver to match the Barbarella catsuit she would be wearing later. ‘You should go for that one. So on fleek.’ Missy had stayed friends with Sansa after a party round at hers a couple of years ago, before following her to London to do a previously unheard of double degree in Middle Eastern studies and Japanese at SOAS, and where she had already scored 100% in every exam going and was on course to be the greatest student they had ever had, as well as the most attractive poster girl.

Sansa had eaten too many cupcakes. This would not help her outfit much. She rubbed her hand on her stomach and sternly ordered it not to bloat, before looking around the front room, currently covered in baking paraphernalia and decade-themed clothes. ‘Where did Jeyne go?’ 

‘The Lanes, she said,’ said Arya.

Jeyne, on a no-sugar, no-wheat diet and claiming to have no interest in baking buttercream cupcakes, had said that she was going shopping for fancy dress, seeing as she hadn’t known about tonight’s dress code (glaring at Meera, rather unnecessarily given that Meera had sent a range of communications via various media).

‘She’s a bit bloody vague, that one,’ said Ygritte, winding strings of pearls around her wrist like a knuckle-duster. ‘How d’you know her again?’

‘School,’ said Sansa. ‘We go way back.’ More’s the pity, she dared to think. Jeyne was her oldest friend and totally her least reliable. Ygritte was her newest, a sort of gorgeous Northern bruiser who worked at the pub in the converted railway station near Sansa’s flat where she’d been working two evenings a week. Ygritte had declared hair war for the first two weeks and Sansa had been pretty terrified until she’d realised that Ygritte was joking. Mostly.

Sansa perched on the arm of the chair and gazed out at the silver-blue slice of sea that they could just see from the window. This time in a fortnight she would also be getting ready, except that it wouldn’t be into fancy dress – it would be her wedding outfit. When she tried to picture it, she felt hazy and champagne-bubbly and just a tiny bit nervous. But with a certain, mud-heavy sense of happiness, the sort that only one person could give her. 

She wondered how Sandor was doing.

***

**Jojen**

‘This is going to be epic,’ said Robin.

‘Mmm.’ Jojen slouched down a little further, his legs stretched out on the train seat opposite, and yawned. He’d been up half the night listening with intense focus to the sound of cellotape being unwound. ‘Sure it will.’

Robin was transforming, slowly, from an excitable little Duracell bunny to something a bit more mellowed out. Following the trauma of his voice beginning to break and thus gently and inevitably, as with all boy sopranos, being ousted from the cathedral choir, he had started wearing black shirts and braces and high ankle boots (a bit of an unwitting Clockwork Orange vibe), gained a runner-up prize in a national kids’ composing competition and had recently discovered, to his wide-eyed amazement, prog rock. Jojen had a very sizeable soft spot for Robin. 

Bran looked up from his copy of Ulysses. He had finished his A-Levels and was already prepping for his English Literature course at Manchester. Jojen smiled at him and looked out at Surrey’s green hills speeding past. _Sweeeeeee_ , he thought, Joyce’s words in his brain after Bran had read some to him last night.

The plan was supposed to have been to go down tomorrow, meet up with the happy couple (well, one happy, one rather more grumpy, as a rule) and all the others on the beach, hang out for a Sunday afternoon.

But where was the fun in that?

***

**Sandor**

‘Remind me why we have to do this again?’ Sandor said, draining his pint, and not feeling much better than when he had been staring down his tarka dal. They were in a pub with artfully dusty shelves and sawdust on the floor that he was fairly sure wasn’t real. A DJ was playing ska and soul records and there were a lot of people shouting around them.

‘Long-standing tradition,’ said Bronn. The bastard was always so chipper. ‘I need to get you off your trolley and leave you tied up at a lamppost starkers.’

‘Do that and I’ll fucking brain you,’ Sandor said, barely joking.

‘Give me some credit,’ said Bronn, with his smooth lie-face on. He looked like you couldn’t trust him as far as you could throw him, though in truth, Bronn was the longest-standing friend Sandor had ever had.

He hadn’t always been great with friends. Plenty whilst in the army, but they tended to drift away from each other once the postings had been done, the unspeakable remaining so. Edd was coming down from his barracks in Northumberland, though. It would be good to see him. 

‘Ah, my friends.’ 

‘Jesus Christ, no.’ Sandor turned round from the bar. That voice could only belong to one Spanish, Spanish-teaching, fuck-anything-that-moves bastard. 

Sure enough, there was Oberyn, wearing a shirt that he should bloody well do up a few more buttons on, and an expression that someone somewhere would probably call raffish, but Sandor preferred to think of as greasy.

‘What the holy hell are you doing here?’ Sandor said. 

Oberyn smiled one of his smug-cunt smiles. ‘Such a pleasant greeting for an old friend. Bronn invited me. We miss you at Casterly Academy.’ He drew the bargirl’s attention by just turning his head minutely. ‘A large glass of Pinot Noir, if you have one, _encantando_.’

The bargirl looked like she’d happily sling her legs over the counter for him before blushingly saying she’d try and hunt some down.

‘Is that a fact.’ Sandor didn’t miss Tywin’s school. London was as hard as fuck in a lot of ways, commuters glued to their phones and him becoming one of them, but it had Sansa and it had a local non-league football team and a lot of pubs less shouty than this one.

‘How are all your boys?’ Oberyn said, sliding his tanned bloody forearms onto the bar.

‘As fucking deranged as ever.’ Sandor had taken a job six months ago in East London at a BESD school for the sort of kids most teachers ran crying from. They’d taken him as much for his army background as his counselling one, but just as much on his height and breadth. The kids had a shite bunch of backgrounds, the lot of them, abused and parents on smack and much more besides, and were excluded from mainstream schools. They made Arya look like fucking Pollyanna. 

He often worried that Sansa was going to leave him behind. He had a good job, but she was applying for an internship at the UN Development Programme and he had visions of her swanning off to far-flung countries and never coming back. They’d talked about it, a lot, and she’d always said she would never go anywhere he didn’t want her to, that he would come with her. Her faith in the two of them was unshakeable. It still baffled him, even now.

Edd came through the door, looking as he always did, which was as if he had considered all forms of suicide and found them wanting.

‘Alright, pal,’ said Sandor, shaking his hand.

Edd gave them all a nod. ‘Alright, mate.’ He gazed at the bar-top and back up. ‘This is a turn-out for the books, then.’ Obviously as surprised as Sandor still was that he’d found someone crazy enough to marry him. 

_Marry_. He tried to ignore the little stab in the gut at the mere thought of that word. ‘Aye. Seems that way.’ Sandor waved at the barman before turning back to his old friend. ‘Lieutenant Colonel, I heard, now?’

Edd raised his eyebrows a half-millimetre. ‘Apparently so,’ he said, looking extremely nonplussed. ‘Can’t think why anyone would want to put me in charge of six hundred grunts.’

It seemed a long old time ago, the two of them together in Iraq. Sandor had done his time for eight years, home and abroad, saved Kevan Lannister’s oil-fucked arse and headed back to the UK, before Tywin had heard about him being jobless and sorted him the posh school. It taken him a while to tell Sansa about it all – he’d been scared about what she’d think of him, as well as not wanting to talk about any of it, ever. 

Sandor introduced them all. A pretty bloody motley crew, and only about to get more motley. The wee lad Pod had said he’d be down later. And there were more to come.

‘He’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, your pal, is he?’ said Bronn a little while later, nodding over to Edd, who was in the corner talking to Oberyn.

Try hauling a lad of eighteen with his legs missing over the desert, thought Sandor. ‘Aye, not his style,’ he said, wondering what Sansa was doing right now, and how she was feeling and whether it was the same as him. Shit-scared of everything. Wanting to constantly vomit and possibly rip out his own lungs.

There was a raucous noise. Rugby cunts, probably. Sandor half-turned, only to be met with a bug-eyed, gurning face.

‘ _Wazaaahhh_.’

Wonderful. He’d known that Robb was coming down, and the permanently-sorry-looking Snow kid, but not Theon Fifty Shades of Idiot Greyjoy. Fucking marvellous.

‘Let’s fucking stag this motherfucker,’ said Theon, putting his hands up in the air and doing some sort of hellishly inept dance move.

‘Alright, bro-in-law,’ said Robb, clapping a hand on his back. ‘This round’s on me.’ Sandor felt slightly sick again. 

***

**Arya**

‘Yaaay,’ said Sansa, settling down with a gin and tonic, taking a sticker of a cock off her face. Arya kept sticking them on less obvious parts of her but she kept finding them. ‘I am so down for this. I am going to ace it.’

Sansa bloody loved tests. She was such a swot, even during her own hen party. Ugh. They were about to play some lame Mr and Mrs game where she was being quizzed on what she knew about Sandor. 

It had been totally inevitable from about six months in, them getting married. Even their parents did not have a total meltdown. The two of them were so different, and yet even Arya couldn’t imagine them not being together. He was just always there, wherever Sansa was, sprawled out on a sofa, telling Arya to pull her finger out, usually through a mouthful of food. After Sansa had told her, Arya had gone to watch some football with him in London, and threatened him with death if he ever hurt her sister, to which he’d just raised his eyebrows and nodded. They were basically the complete opposite of Arya and her romantic life, which was exactly zilch and staying that way.

‘Right,’ said Meera, sitting cross-legged on the sofa. ‘According to Sandor, what is your best physical feature?’

Arya rolled her eyes. Oh god. He would say her arse. 

Sansa sat up very straight, like she was on The Weakest Link or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Didn’t hesitate. ‘My hair.’

‘Yup,’ said Meera. ‘What would he say you think is _his_ best physical feature?’

‘It’s obviously his cock,’ said Ygritte, who had two pens in her mouth and was drawing something with deep concentration.

‘Gross,’ said Arya, putting black eyeliner liberally around one eye. She was resolutely going for post-punk, Joy Division-style, staying faithful to Uncle Ilyn, not that she saw him any more. 

‘The man is big all over. She told me herself,’ Ygritte said. ‘Magic marker as compared to biro, if you know what I mean.’

‘Agh,’ said Sansa, staring into the middle of the room and not really listening. ‘Because I love everything. Shoulders. I love his shoulders. And the way they frame his tattoo. But would he think that?’ Her face lifted. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes he would. Shoulders.’ She nodded, very definitely.

‘Cute,’ said Missy.

‘You are good at this,’ said Meera.

‘With those sort of deduction skills, you are gonna be the UN’s dream,’ said Arya.

‘What is Sandor’s favourite thing to do with you?’ said Meera. 

‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ said Sansa, sitting back and looking stupidly dreamy.

‘Can you not do the questions about his favourite flavour crisps or whatever?' said Arya. ‘Because I am her sister and this is making me gag.’

‘Sorry,’ said Meera. 

‘Roast chicken,’ said Sansa.

‘Correct,’ said Meera.

Sansa beamed and took another bite of cupcake.

‘Who is his best friend?’

‘These are too easy,’ said Sansa. ‘Bronn. Lovely Bronn.’

‘Bronn _is_ lovely,’ said Meera.

‘We’re seeing these boys tomorrow, right?’ said Ygritte, coming back from the kitchen with scissors and sitting down again.

‘Yup,’ said Arya. 

‘Is he fit, then? Ron?’

‘ _Bronn_. Bronn is totally married,’ said Sansa. 

‘And his wife would fuck you up,’ said Arya. ‘Big time.’ 

‘No one could take me out,’ said Ygritte. ‘I’m fookin’ hard. I’m nails, me. Are we going out soon, or what?’ She put her scissors down and gave a pleased sort of nod. 

‘What are you doing?’

‘Making tonight a bit more fun,’ said Ygritte, oblivious to Meera’s raised eyebrow. ‘We’ve got to up this bollocks. Hen dares.’ She held up a wheel with a cardboard arrow and the circle sliced into triangles, each with a scrawled phrase on each one. Arya could just about read, on one of them, ‘pinch a hunk’s bum.’

Arya rather liked Ygritte.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PICSET!**
> 
> **BRITISH NOTES FOR ALL YOU OTHER WEIRDOS**
> 
> SOAS = School of Oriental and African Studies, once of London’s central universities, and very fine too.
> 
> BESD School = Behavioural, emotional and social difficulties
> 
> Non-league football = non-professional, just a few hundred supporters or so
> 
> On fleek = slang that is probably already over, but means stylish, cool, etc  
> Chipper = upbeat  
> Off your trolley = drunk  
> Pull your finger out = to get off your arse and do the thing you're supposed to do; be proactive  
> Swot = very well-established Brit slang for cleverclogs, brainy know-it-all type  
> Nails = hard as nails = tough motherfucker
> 
> **James Joyce bonus quote:**
> 
> _‘frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweet synnnng… sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeeeeee’_  
>  \- Ulysses


	2. Pub

**Sandor**

‘You ready to shack up with Sansa, then?’ said Theon. ‘She’s a bit high-maintenance.’

Pub number three, in the Lanes. Bronn had kept threatening things like blindfolding him and paintball and being chased by zombies, though none of that had happened. Yet. He kept checking over his shoulder for one of the undead. Hopefully this was the last pub, and he could just go and hunker down in the hotel and wait for tomorrow to come when at least Sansa would be there.

‘Not as much as you’d think,’ said Sandor, managing not to rise to the bug-eyed shit’s pretense at how much he knew her - Sansa had once told him that the level of their romantic interaction had been kiss-chase when she was seven. He’d lived with Sansa for a year anyway, so the shacking up would hardly be new. Just the calling her his wife thing. 

Wife. Christ fucking Jesus. Sandor worked hard for the tenth time that day at talking himself out of a panic attack.

A light hand on his shoulder and a new voice, more stoner-fairy than zombiefied. ‘Alright, bro.’

Sandor’s heart sank further into its own sorry mire. Bloody Jojen and another one of his soon-to-be-countless brothers-in-law, who was already shaking hands with Pod. Bran and Jojen had been thick as bloody thieves for years. They were scarily alike, always talking about writers and philosophy and Japanese food as easily as if they were talking about the weather.

‘What the fuck are you two doing here?’ Sandor said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be coming tomorrow?’

‘Yeah,’ said the little artfucker, stinking of smoke, looking around as if he was bored out of his brain or probably wanted to turn the whole pub into some sort of art experience or whatever all those students did. ‘Thought we’d surprise you.’

‘Christ,’ said Sandor, slightly wishing at this point that he was back in Iraq.

‘Oh, and we brought a present for you.’ Jojen smiled, lazily. 

A mid-range, delighted voice. ‘Sandor!’

Robin might have been striding steadfastly into the world of puberty, but he still had the capacity to adore a hug.

***

**Sansa**

‘She’s quite – energetic.’ Meera was sitting next to Sansa in the speakeasy-style bar, watching Ygritte wangle a free wine from the barman and down it in one.

‘She’s from Hull,’ Sansa said, helpfully.

‘Gotcha.’ Meera grinned, a small, dark sparkle. 

Sansa was currently wearing her slinky 1940s evening gown and looking like a retro Hollywood film star with her ironed-flat hair and redder-than-red lips. Meera had her 1950s prom queen thing going on. Jeyne was still absent, having blithely Instagrammed photos of herself in retro clothes shops wearing huge sunglasses with pineapples on them, as if forgetting that they would all see them.

‘She’s not always like this,’ said Sansa, still watching Ygritte. ‘She’s actually quite demure some of the time. I think it’s the drink. Maybe it’s a Northern thing.’

‘I’m not sure we’re going to be able to stop her there,’ said Meera, as Ygritte slammed down her wine glass and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘I’m really hoping I don’t have to play this game,’ said Missy, who was wearing a silver catsuit and holding a large plastic gun and basically looking amazing, because she always did. ‘Isn’t it just supposed to be the bride-to-be? I’ve got a reputation to maintain. Mostly, anyway.’ 

Missy was classy and super-sweet. She’d broken up with Grey after he’d been getting into too many fights, and would be seen drifting through uni corridors thinking dreamily about the delicacies of the two Japanese syllabic scripts, whilst a trail of Oriental and Asian-studying boys gazed longingly after her. 

‘Not by Ygritte’s rules,’ said Sansa as her friend marched back over.

‘Right, lovelies,’ Ygritte said, sitting down and slamming a hand down on the table. She had dismissed the idea of going as a 1920s flapper girl in favour of a 1980s rock chick and had crimped and backcombed her hair, a bit like Bon Jovi, if Bon Jovi was a terrifying, flat-vowelled girl from Humberside. ‘I did two challenges in one there. Double points to me.’

‘Yay you,’ said Sansa.

‘Little sister.’ Ygritte jabbed a finger towards Arya. ‘My ‘80s compadre. Mini-minx.’ Winked.

Arya sat up. ‘Yeah?’ 

Ygritte spun her Wheel of Fucking Come And Have A Go Dares (as she’d labelled it) round. 

Arya watched the arrow settle, before sitting up and beginning to sing the chorus of ‘Like A Virgin,’ or at least the bits she could remember, very loudly. Everyone in the bar turned round. Sansa, Meera and Missy shrank slightly lower in their seats. 

‘Boss arse fucking bitch,’ said Ygritte with exaggerated slowness, high-fiving her sister. 

‘Damn straight,’ said Arya, looking pretty pleased. 

Sansa was next. _Please not kissing a bald man’s head_ , she prayed, though where the arrow landed wasn’t much better. ‘In the men’s toilet? In this?’

‘Bet your bloody life, Sans.’ Ygritte prodded her and pointed to the Gents sign. ‘Go on, off you toddle.’

Sansa sighed, tossed her hair over her shoulder (she had watched some YouTube clips of Rita Hayward during the week), and did her best to sashay confidently over. 

At least it wasn’t a horrible sports bar, or indeed the sort of pub in which she met Sandor, ie her fiancé, ie her very-nearly-husband. How had it been almost three years, she thought, pushing the Men’s toilet door open. No one was in there, thankfully. Just a row of (clean, thankfully) urinals, a gilded mirror and a shinily-buffed set of sinks. Sansa didn’t even need the loo. She hung around for as long as she dared, hugging her elbows, before pushing the door back open and walking smack bang into the chest of a large man in a shirt and braces with very red cheeks.

‘Wrong loo, mate,’ she said, nonchalantly. ‘Yours is over there.’ And walked back over, to whistles from Ygritte, who was very clearly bringing down the tone of this slightly posh hipster bar with its green leather booths and artfully-arranged vintage suitcases, and was already spinning the wheel for Missy.

‘Oh gosh,’ said Missy, but her face brightened when she saw where the arrow pointed. _Chat up a man in a foreign accent_. ‘That is my perfect option. I can do way better than that. Swear down. Watch this.’ She dashed up to the bar and tapped a man on the shoulder.

‘Love it,’ said Ygritte. ‘You lot are mad for it.’

Ygritte was a thoroughly bad influence. This was not supposed to be one of those hen parties. They weren’t wearing plastic tiaras from Claire’s Accessories or peeing in the street (yet), but this was just supposed to be a nice girl’s night out.

Sansa checked her phone again as she sat down. ‘Where is bloody Jeyne? She is the worst friend ever.’ She was in no doubt that Jeyne would do all these dares very merrily indeed.

No one exactly contradicted her. Meera raised an eyebrow as she sipped her cocktail.

‘Maybe we should go and find her,’ said Sansa.

‘Track her down, you mean. Give her what for.’ Ygritte glanced up at Missy, who was by now earnestly chatting in Punjabi to a slightly nonplussed-looking guy in a waistcoat at the bar. ‘Let’s go hunting,’ she said.

***

**Jojen**

‘Ah, Jojen. You look even more reed-like than ever, darling boy.’ Oberyn had slid up to the bar without Jojen really noticing. Back in school, he’d always managed to appear at your desk, murmur conjunctions in Spanish and make them sound like dirty talk.

‘Cheers, Mr M,’ said Jojen.

Mr Martell looked beautifully aghast. ‘No, no. That will not do. You have not graced Casterly Academy for a year. Oberyn, or nothing.’ He raised a dramatic eyebrow. 

There had been a grandiose break-up between he and Ms. Sand in Jojen’s last year at school. Call-Me-Ellaria was often to be found smashing things up in the art department, or occasionally throwing them at Mr Martell’s head. 

Jojen gave a foxish grin. ‘Oberyn, then.’

‘Ah. Much better.’ He leaned a little closer. The dude was wearing quite a lot of cologne, like he’d swooned into the men’s aisle at Boots.

Jojen had to admit being attracted to him. But Mr - _Oberyn_ was attractive to everyone with a pulse. And Jojen was attracted to quite a lot of people. He tried not to imagine himself being a 1930s painter and Oberyn the painter’s muse, probably holed up in the South of France , covered in paint, smoking cigarillos and quoting Lorca whilst sucking each other off.

Oberyn looked past Jojen, a purringly delighted look on his face. ‘And who is that one? In the wheelchair? I have seen him before, I think.’

Bran was definitely a part-time wheelchair-user these days. Jojen spent quite a lot of time watching him practise with his crutches, and sometimes just one crutch, feeling a strange sense of joy and weepy melancholy at the sight of his legs slowly, painfully slowly, beginning to properly remember themselves, and at Bran’s quiet doggedness. He hardly ever broke a sweat.

Jojen recovered himself and put his elbows on the bar. ‘That is my boyfriend,’ he said, with lazy assurance.

Oberyn didn’t look disappointed. Only more delighted, in the way of a semi-tame tiger finding two gazelles in a shadowy corner of the jungle. ‘Of course he is.’ A low bow before he drifted away.

‘If you’re going to go off with him, just tell me first,’ said Bran, in a calm, half-smiling way, as he wheeled up to Jojen’s elbow. They watched Oberyn put an arm round a probably unwitting Theon, whilst Edd, the straight-up soldier dude, carefully took a very small step to the side.

‘The only person I’m interested in has an awesome set of wheels and well sexy pins,’ said Jojen, bending down to put his thumb on Bran’s bottom lip. ‘And a red wine stain on his mouth,’ he said, rather gently, before kissing him. 

‘Right, you two lovebirds,’ said Bronn, clapping a hand on his back. ‘We’re off.’

‘Where’s next?’ said Jojen.

‘You’ll see,’ said Bronn.

‘You know he’d hate anything really crass,’ said Bran. It was rather adorable how he’d become this little almost-brother to the part-bear, part-muscle daddy with the soft centre that was Sandor. 

‘I know, I know,’ said Bronn, and leaned in confidentially. ‘I keep threatening the worst, but to be honest, it’s just to see that look on his face. You know, the one where he’s trying to decide whether to kill you or himself.’

He winked.

***

**Arya**

‘This is not doing my hair any favours,’ said Sansa, wobbling slightly on the cobbles in her heels. ‘Or my ankles.’

As usual, this being the south coast of England in April, it was as windy as fuck as they walked down the Lanes, past the now-closing vintage and record shops, people spilling out happily from cabaret bars and old-school pubs as if it was a boiling hot summer’s day. 

‘Sorry, sis,’ said Arya. ‘But you said she was around here.’

‘She definitely was a while ago,’ said Sansa, peering at her phone on their Jeyne-stalking mission. ‘She put up a SnapChat of herself with some old rocker guys.’

Pods and rockers, Arya tried not to think, and did anyway. 

Brighton suited Arya. A nice mix of people – hipsters, grungey eyelinered kids, and plenty of places to do street art alongside all her uni studies. Gigs. Parties on the beach. Lots of cool new friends, cheapish pubs, and cute arty boys. And she didn’t want any of them. Because none of them were him.

‘It’s so nice,’ said Missy, on her first trip to the city. ‘This place is live, man.’

This was the best bit of Brighton, apart from the beach itself. Coloured flags and fairy lights were strung between the buildings, and Hawaiian shirts and tea sets and crates of vinyl were being wheeled into the shops that were closing. There were speciality chocolate shops, bonsai tree shops, a pie shop with paintings of pies in parachutes and vegetarian shoe shops. A three-piece band was busking, and one crazy man in a bright orange skintight catsuit and with tattoos all over his bald head dancing next to them. It wasn’t Brighton without a crazy dancing man in a onesie.

‘Jeyne!’ shouted Ygritte. ‘Where are you, you bloody waster?’

‘Let’s go down to the front,’ Arya said. ‘She’s probably trying to bust into a gay club.’

‘Ooo!’ said Sansa, on her tiptoes and staring all the way down the road. 

‘Is it her?’ Arya said, craning her neck and doing a rather less good job of being tall, what with her short-arse status now seeming to be entirely permanent.

Sansa was already gathering her dress into her hand and tottering away. 

‘Wait up, sis,’ said Arya, calling Ygritte, who was rubbing the crazy dancing man’s bald head and looking like she was about to lick it, before pushing past people to follow Sansa. And seeing exactly who she’d spotted.

***

**Sandor**

‘Hello, hello,’ said Bronn, nudging Sandor’s arm and nodding up the lane.

Sandor looked over and his heart stopped. 

She was wearing a long dress somewhere between green and silver and was looking like a fuckable mermaid as she came towards him. Jesus H Christ. One of these days she would definitely kill him. 

‘Surprise,’ Sansa said, or rather cooed, close to his ear. She would speak like that to him in the mornings, before he got up properly. It was like being woken up by a nest of roosting bloody homing pigeons. ‘Hello, baby.’

Sandor put an arm round her waist, sickened and utterly relieved to see her. ‘What the hell are you lot doing here?’

‘Jeyne’s gone awol,’ she said, as behind them Robin clung happily onto Arya, who was looking her usual goth-misery self. ‘We were looking for her. Sort of.’

‘Isn’t it bad luck or something?’ he said.

Around them, there was a mix of hugs and introductions, hands shaken and cheeks kissed. Jon and Meera, the couple who might as well be in a petting zoo, were arm in arm. Theon and Robb were looking at Sansa’s friend Missy like she was some futuristic hologram in her silver space jumpsuit or whatever it was.

‘That’s the _wedding_. Seeing me on the morning of the wedding. The gender-split thing is stupid. We all know each other.’ She gazed at him, part-imp, part-seductress. ‘Do you want us to go?’

‘No fucking way in hell,’ Sandor said, tightening his grip on her. Sometimes he wondered how she could still breathe and yet he did it anyway. ‘Don’t go anywhere. Save me from these nutjobs.’ He put his nose into her neck, and got a direct hit of Sansa, which was currently coolness and heat and a whole load of some perfume.

‘Hiya, love,’ said Bronn, giving her a kiss. ‘You look bloody edible.’

‘Thank you very much indeed,’ said Sansa, beaming. The bastard had a way of being ridiculously flirty and getting away with it. ‘How is your lovely stag night going?’

‘It’s going fine, if eating curry and craft beer is all that’s required,’ said Bronn. ‘And singing.’

Sandor looked at him. No one had sung anything. Not even Robin, because apparently not much came out these days but a half-arsed croak, thank Christ. ‘What are you on about?’

Bronn nodded above Sandor’s head. At the sign that said ‘AmazeSing: Karaoke and Gin Bar.’

‘No,’ said Sandor.

‘ _Yes_ ,’ said Sansa exuberantly, tugging on his hand and dragging him inside. 

***

**Arya**

‘Sup, bruvs,’ Arya said, hugging her big brother and her younger one. Jojen and Bran – and Robin – were a surprise, but the more the merrier. ‘We are going to rule Brighton, bitches. Bristol takeover.’ She hugged Jojen, who murmured something in her ear. ‘What?’

‘Pod’s here,’ he said again, just as quietly.

A strange, cementy moment. Arya stayed crushed into Jojen’s jacket and he kept his arms around her because he knew, because he was still her best mate, that those two words would be enough to reach into her soul and drag out her heart and stomp on it. 

‘Fuck,’ she said into his chest.

Pod was here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PICSET
> 
> **  
> **  
> BRITISH SLANG TIME:  
>  Swear down = I swear, honest, honestly  
> Live (pronounced as in ‘alive’) = good, nice, great
> 
> If it’s not obvious, ‘the front’ means the ‘sea front,’ ie the road that runs along the sea.
> 
>  **IMPORTANT NOTE:**  
>  Chips are fries. Not potato chips. Because they, of course, are crisps.
> 
>  **SWIMMINGFOX'S WHISTLESTOP GUIDE TO BRIGHTON**  
>  Brighton is an hour on the train directly south from London. It’s famous for its gay scene, a spot of eccentricity and artistry, classic seaside tropes, hosting political conferences, being bombed by the IRA, its pebble beaches, and being bastard windy. It’s popular all year round but is rammed in the summer.


	3. Karaoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I have to admit something – I thought Captain was a higher rank in the British Army but was getting confused with the RAF. So I am making Edd a Lieutenant Colonel from here on in and correcting it from earlier. MY BAD.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **Quickfire emergency UK slang guide for North Americans:**
> 
>  
> 
> **Pants = underwear not trousers**  
>  **Flapjacks = oatmeal cookies or some nonsense**

**Sansa**

‘You are a very bad person,’ she said to Sandor, who was going to be her husband in two weeks minus five hours plus two champagnes and a gin and tonic and two glasses of very posh wine. She hadn’t spotted Pod straight away outside the karaoke bar, hanging quietly at the back of the group.

‘I didn’t know you lot were going to turn up, did I?’ Sandor said. ‘He was just popping in for a drink tonight. He’s got a friend down here, he said, was thinking of coming down anyway and said he’d look in.’ He put his hands up. ‘Don’t bloody shoot me.’

She shot him with her fingers and narrowed her eyes. She was all three Charlie’s Angels condensed into one, in a slinky postwar frock. ‘Pow.’ 

He narrowed his eyes at her and didn’t pretend to be grotesquely shot and killed, as he had done once or twice for her in the past. ‘Will she be alright?’ 

It made Sansa’s insides turn into untoasted English muffins to hear his concern, however much he tried to dress it up in gruffness. She put her finger-gun down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking back at the door.

***

**Arya**

‘Hello.’ Arya stood opposite Pod outside the karaoke bar. Her stomach felt like it was stitching itself together with chicken wire and wooden pegs. Everyone else had gone inside. 

‘Hey,’ he said.

After that night ten months ago at Lysa’s wedding in the woods, they had seen each other a few times. But not to get back together. Only to talk, quietly and with difficulty, and to give back the things that had migrated to each other’s rooms. T-shirts, pants, memory sticks, a book or two, the bracelets they’d swapped. He’d told her to keep the cap she’d worn all of the last summer. It had been utterly painful. There should have been a hospital for that sort of thing. 

Arya hadn’t had a good few weeks after that. She was staring down her A-Levels and feeling her whole self screw up into a tiny ball. She wanted to trickle into a drain and die. Didn’t eat much. Smoked. But other people who somehow still loved her were there. Jojen, rather unusually, had removed the joints from her mouth and replaced them with spoonfuls of peanut butter. Bran had made her revision charts and gently tested her. Sansa had sent her tons of poetry quotes and accessory-presents, and took her out for drinks and watched crap girl-movies with her when she was home. Even Sandor had taken her out once, and his no-shit-taking talk had helped almost more than anything. 

Now, having not seen Pod in person for seven months, she felt hollow, like the wind could go right through her and make her bones whistle. He looked – as he had always done, though his hair was a bit longer, and he had more beard. He looked so cute.

‘You know I’m studying here now,’ she said. She knew he knew. Sansa and Sandor had stayed in touch with him, even if she had not.

‘Yeah. That’s great.’ Pod gave her a careful smile. His pride in her achievements had always kept her going, before. She’d always hoped he would still be proud of her.

‘And you’ve – got a girlfriend?’ she said, her ribs slicing against each other.

He’d never been one for shouting about love stuff online. Just a few of their own double-selfies back in the day, which seemed about a thousand years ago. 

But that hadn’t stopped Arya occasionally (and sometimes more than occasionally) stalking him online, and her innards going into meltdown three months ago as she saw _Podrick is in a relationship_ at the top of his profile. A meltdown that no amount of stomping up to London to Sansa and Sandor’s for Chinese takeaway and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream could cure. She had felt awful for days. Weeks, really. She hadn’t stopped feeling awful.

And it was just a bit of idea as to how she might have made him feel. With Gendry. Except, of course, it had been worse for him because then they had been together. Because she was the worst.

Pod was doing a mixture of looking at his shoes (really nice trainers which she hadn’t seen before) and up at her. ‘Yeah. She’s called Tyene.’

‘Is she – Spanish?’

‘Portuguese.’

Arya wanted to brain herself with Brighton’s finest beach-stones. A Portuguese girlfriend. ‘Cool,’ she said. ‘Um, yeah. Ok.’ She turned to the door. ‘Um, Jojen wanted me for something.’

‘Arya.’

She turned back.

‘Do you want me to go?’ He put his hands in his back pockets. ‘I didn’t know I’d see you.’ 

She shook her head. She was older. Mature. She could ride this. ‘It’s cool. It’s nice that you came. For Sandor.’

He nodded and followed her inside, and she could feel him drift off in a different direction to say hi to Sansa. Bronn had hired a whole room with red leather booths and a little stage and it was the worst place she could possibly be right now. 

Missy was there at her shoulder, putting a gin cocktail in her hand. ‘You ok, bae?’

No. Arya nodded. 

‘It’s heavy.’ Missy put an arm round her waist. ‘It’ll get easier. I thought I was never going to get over Grey, but give it time.’

Time. It had been ten months. Arya still felt shit.

Sansa came over. ‘Sandor is _really_ sorry.’ Put her arms around her as Missy kissed her on the cheek and left them both.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Arya, feeling totally blank, wanting to go and lie down somewhere and binge-watch Orange is the New Black, which mostly had girls in it. Girls were fine. Girls were safe. She should become a lesbian, with shit-tons of tattoos. There were tons of tattooed lesbians in Brighton. She had kissed one of them on a night out once. It had been ok. 

Sansa hugged her some more, a tight, big-sister hug full of love and alcohol and cupcakes. ‘It’s no thing,’ Arya said. ‘Honest. Go sign me up.’

‘Yeah?’ said her sister, carefully. 

It was her hen night bullshit. ‘Yeah. You know my songs. Like A Virgin not being one of them.’ 

‘Oh God,’ said Sansa. ‘I don’t know how it turned into that.’

‘Ygritte’s cool. I’m going to beat her on the dares, though.’ Arya looked over towards the bar, where Ygritte – who, incredibly, was a part-time NHS nurse – was walking along slapping various men’s arses, one after the other. ‘Maybe.’

Theon was there, putting his gross squid-arms round her. ‘Heyyyy, little squirter.’ 

‘Fuck off, wasteman.’

‘That girl is making my balls hurt,’ Theon said, releasing her and leaning back on the bar.

‘Which girl?’

‘Her.’ He nodded over to Missy, who was saying hi to Pod. ‘She is hot as fuck.’ 

‘Don’t be a dick,’ said Arya. ‘Oh no, wait. I forgot. Dick is your middle name.’ The more she insulted people, the more she could ignore the sucker punch pain in her brain. Pod was as hot as fuck, and he was right there, and girlfriended.

‘Dick is what I am going to put inside her,’ said Theon, doing a shit Michael Jackson crotch-grabbing impression, complete with a _sh’mon_ yelp.

‘Mate. You’ve got no chance,’ said Robb, joining them and folding his arms.

‘Nor have you,’ said Arya.

Robb stuck his tongue out at her. Winked.

***

**Sandor**

It was a full fucking house now. Sixteen of them, including the underage crackpot they were all trying to hide from the staff. Robin was looking at the list of songs that Meera was showing him, wide-eyed. This place was probably his wet dream. Even Bran wasn’t old enough to be in here, except that his chair somehow managed to get him sympathy points.

Bronn was currently kicking things off on the karaoke with You Can Leave Your Hat On, whilst all the girls (and some of the guys) watched, rapt. The smooth fucker had watched ‘The Full Monty’ too many bloody times. 

Sandor always marvelled at how Sansa gathered friends around her. Always going out for cheap grub or drinks with people she’d just met, bringing them back and getting him to cook them all dinner, not that he minded so much. There were more men than women here, but most of them were her friends and family, not his. That was fine. Even if one of them was a crazy-arsed livewire. 

Ygritte, who would always have a pint of Sandor’s favourite ale on the counter at the pub before he’d even sat down, who would let rip with bodily fluid-disaster stories of people in her care at the hospital, had already argued quite vehemently with Bronn about how Humberside was more hard than West Yorkshire and slapped every man’s arse in the whole place, except for Bran’s. Robin had looked utterly terrified.

She was currently standing very close to Edd, staring at him. ‘Edison?’ she was saying. ‘Didn’t he invent the telephone or something?’

‘Lightbulb,’ said Edd. ‘And it’s got two ‘d’s. And it’s my first name.’

Ygritte was giving him a hopeful, slightly terrifying grin. ‘Dangerous and deranged?’

‘Not really,’ said Edd.

‘Devilish and delirious,’ she said, leaning a bit closer. 

‘Not so much.’

‘Dirty Dancing?’ She took hold of one of his hips. ‘Go on, I need a bit of bump and grind if I’m going to win this hen dares bastard.’

‘Um, no thanks,’ said Edd, looking over at Sandor in the same way that he’d looked in Iraq when the radio had gone down and there was only one way back over to base.

Ygritte scowled and made a thin noise through her teeth. ‘You’re no fun,’ she said, jabbing a finger in his chest.

‘So they tell me,’ Edd said, but the crazy lass was already turning round and making a beeline for Robb. ‘Christ,’ he said to Sandor.

‘Women aren’t so forward up there, then?’ Sandor said.

‘Women aren’t up there full stop,’ Edd said, and ordered another pint.

‘She’s crackers, that one,’ said Bronn, coming over. ‘She bloody goosed me. My balls haven’t recovered.’ He turned to Sandor. ‘Right, your turn.’ 

‘No fucking chance.’

Bronn gave Sandor the sort of look he probably had to give Casterly Rock Academy kids when he found them shagging at the bottom of the field. ‘Count yourself lucky I haven’t set a load of strippers on you.’ He leant a bit closer, and softened his voice, though you could guarantee that he’d use the same voice on someone trying and failing to mug him. ‘You’ll get up and you’ll bloody sing.’

***

**Jojen**

Jojen had an arm slung around Bran as they both sat on one of the couches, watching the fun play out.

Robb and Theon were currently sitting either side of Missy, their efforts to be witty and charming seemingly ineffectual what with Missy looking politely bored and occasionally rolling her eyes over at Jojen.

Sandor had surprised every single person in the room by gripping the microphone rather tightly, his head practically touching the ceiling, and singing Frank Sinatra’s I Won’t Dance, very beautifully indeed. Everyone except Sansa, who just beamed proudly and fanned herself. 

Now Jon was rather mournfully singing You Only Live Twice, whilst Meera encouraged him by doing slinky Bond girl actions with Missy’s plastic gun.

‘Is she ok, do you think?’ Bran said, nodding gently over towards Arya, who was sitting three feet away from Pod and staring at her knees.

‘Don’t know,’ said Jojen. The fierce love of Arya for Pod was like a ley line. A ley line that had gone wobbly for a while, as she fell into the probably grubby sheets of Gendry Waters. Jojen had always felt nothing but sympathy for her. It had been a mistake. Everyone made mistakes, and she had paid for it in the shittiest way. He worried about her sometimes – there was a sadness to her she hadn’t had at school, as if she was a Renaissance painting left in the dark too long, in need of a careful restorative clean to make her shine again. ‘She still loves him.’ 

‘Who doesn’t?’ said Bran.

Jojen ran his finger over the small bone on Bran’s shoulder, the one that felt like ceramic. ‘Do you?’

‘He did make amazing cakes. I miss his cakes.’ Bran smiled at him.

‘I could make you cakes.’

‘You made hash cakes. Once.’ They had eaten all of them and subsequently giggled uncontrollably all the way through a very long BBC4 documentary on the Spanish Civil War before falling asleep in a tangle of limbs on the sofa and having to be woken up by Catelyn hours later.

‘I could put something else in instead of hash. Chocolate chips. Bananas. More peanut butter.’ Jojen nodded to the stage. ‘Hello.’

Robin was doing sound-check noises into the microphone, before he coughed, quite dramatically. Everyone looked over. ‘I would like to dedicate this to my sick cousin Sansa and her fiancé Sandor,’ he said. 

‘God help us,’ Jojen could hear Sandor say, very quietly, whilst Sansa _shh_ -ed him.

Robin launched into Stairway to Heaven, a song that didn’t require too much soprano-like trilling, though he still cracked alarmingly on the higher notes. The air guitar was something to behold.

‘That’s our boy,’ said Jojen.

‘What are you going to sing?’ said Bran.

‘Don’t know yet.’ He looked over at his boyfriend. ‘They haven’t got any Klaus Nomi on the list.’ He knew he was a pretentious wanker half the time, but he loved that he could up his game with Bran. And being at Central St Martin’s didn’t exactly temper his adoration of all things esoteric.

‘Justin Bieber it is, then,’ said Bran.

***

**Sansa**

Sansa was laughing her head off as her older brother sang Wicked Game, quite badly. If it had been any attempt by Robb at wooing Missy, it was failing utterly as she wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention.

‘So you’re like, a colonel?’ said Missy, at Sansa’s table.

‘Lieutenant Colonel,’ said Edd, appearing pretty alarmed at the sight of the Barbarella-inspired vision looking earnestly at him, her chin propped on a hand. ‘It’s a lower rank.’

‘Safe,’ Missy said. ‘You must be so brave.’

‘No braver than anyone else,’ said Edd.

‘Only a brave man would say that,’ she said. 

‘Right,’ said Edd, looking very steadfastly at his drink.

It was so much nicer being altogether, even if it was a slightly strange mixture of teachers, members of the British Army, marine biologists and students. Missy had done a very cute version of No Scrubs and Bran had unveiled his very awesome rapping skills by doing Kanye West’s Stronger while Jojen grinned in the corner. Sandor had given what until now had only ever been a private performance after quite a lot of wine, and once or twice when she was sitting naked on top of him. 

He constantly surprised her, the way he would be utterly reluctant to do something and then do it with bells on. Like when they went to Italy and he managed to order an entire meal in extremely dodgy cod-Italian and went as brown as an oak tree trunk and bought three pairs of sunglasses after saying that he hated hot weather. Or when he said that he didn’t get philosophy and subsequently read every ‘Introducing’ graphic guide to big ideas on Sansa’s shelf and started picking holes in her arguments. Or in the last year, careful and questioning about getting married and then – ok, he hadn’t really stopped being careful and questioning on that front. 

He did keep giving her a look from over in the corner like he had something very terrible to tell her, but Sansa was feeling extremely cheerful on her second French 75 and was not going to have it. They would bloody well get married and she would trample all over his self-doubt with her very highest heels and maybe have sex with him in them again. And she would serenade him right now.

‘Ygritte says it’s your turn on the dares,’ Arya said, coming over.

‘I am not playing that game anymore,’ said Sansa. ‘It is very beneath me. I am a 1940s Hollywood film star full of poise and wonder. I am Sass-sansa.’

‘But you’re the bride,’ Arya said. ‘Them’s the rules.’

‘Take over for me. Team Stark. Get me all the points.’ She stood up. ‘I have important singy things to do.’

‘Urgh,’ said Arya.

***

**Arya**

Arya sang after her sister, who had hiked up her dress to display annoyingly excellent thighs and do quite impressive Beyoncé impressions as she sang Crazy in Love (Bran did the Jay-Z bit, what with Sandor waving both hands at her and putting his fingers in his ears). Ideally, Arya would have sung her favourite Savages song – allowing her to shout ‘husbands’ in an increasingly demonic style at Sandor – but they didn’t have a very indie list, this being a dorky karaoke bar, however much they decorated it with railway sleepers and served them drinks in jars. So instead she sang ‘Rehab’, and thought all the way through about what a terrible person she was, trying not to look at Pod, who was definitely watching her as he clutched his drink on his thigh and talked to Jojen.

So when she finished, she walked over to him. She would be a mature person and not run off again. And she had drunk gin.

‘Are you not singing?’ she said. 

Pod gave her a slow, slightly unreadable smile. A very small one. Jojen was drifting away, languorous as cigar smoke.

‘But you’ve got a –’ I love your singing, she thought. ‘I always liked your singing.’ Even though he mostly listened to noisecore and weird electronic bleeping and reworked toys, he had never been averse to a little bit of crooning just for Arya, in her ear late at night, of the sorts of bands that they listened to on 6Music.

He put his elbows on the back of the seat. Seemed to almost blush. ‘In a bit, maybe.’ 

She made herself sit down next to him, leaving a foot of space between them. Wondered if he sang to Tyrene or whatever her name was. If he had showed her his modular synth stuff. Went to festivals with her. Baked her cakes. 

‘How’s Uncle – how’s Ilyn?’ She picked up a beermat, and began folding one corner over. Just to do something.

‘He’s fine.’ He looked over, a slight spark in his eye. ‘Got himself a girlfriend.’

‘No shit. How did he do that? I mean – I just mean, not by talking to her, I guess.’

‘She’s quite rock and roll. They met at a Northern Soul night in some community hall. She talks quite a lot.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe for the both of them.’

The way his face went sunrisey in a millisecond hurt like a stab wound. Arya did her best to smile back and not bolt. She would sit here, and she would be totally chill.

They watched Theon, currently singing ‘I’m Bringing Sexy Back’ to a mostly uninterested audience apart from Robb cackling in the background and Ygritte half-heartedly wolf-whistling, and didn’t speak for a while. What did you say after ten months? It was as if there was a massive weight between them, a big stone behemoth with the totally fucking obvious words carved into it. WE USED TO BE TOGETHER. WE LOVED EACH OTHER. I STILL LOVE YOU.

‘Are you –’ Pod looked at his hands, and over at her. ‘Did you never go out with Gendry?’

‘No,’ she said, very vehemently. Is that what he had thought? Maybe he was still giving her more credit than she was due, thinking she’d wanted to actually be with the loser from Southmead. ‘No,’ she said again, more carefully. ‘I haven’t been out with anyone.’

Pod didn’t say anything.

She continued tearing the beermat into shreds.

***

**Sandor**

All five girls – Sansa’s daft little friend Jeyne, who tended to scowl at him and never pronounced his name right, was still mysteriously absent – were onstage going hell for leather on ‘Single Ladies’, whilst the idiot-brained Theon shook his skinny arse in front of them. Sansa was definitely singing the loudest.

‘She’s a nice lass, mate,’ said Edd, watching with him from the bar. 

‘Aye. She is.’ Understatement of the millennium. She had legs up to her ears, she performed occasional strip shows for him which incorporated whatever food was in the fridge, she made him feel a better man than he ever had before, she was doing her damndest to learn the current Queen of the South squad, she was probably going to end up running the UN or at least some big NGO, and he didn’t want to let her down by being a shit husband.

Husband.

She was currently sticking the fourth finger of her left hand up at him and singing ‘put a ring on it’ with extreme enthusiasm. Sandor took a deep gulp of his pint. He still couldn’t quite fathom how on earth she’d want to. Part of him wanted to self-sacrifice, fall on his sword, let her have the life she should have. There was still time. It was just him – barring an aunt in Fife, there wasn’t any family to speak of. Christ. Though perhaps she had enough for the pair of them, he thought, watching Robin put his hands up in a very unconvincing R’n’B move, whilst Robb, who had his arm round Ygritte, only encouraged him. 

The wee lass Missy, who had absolutely never needed counselling at Casterly Rock, was bouncing over as the song finished, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at Edd. ‘What are you going to sing?’

‘I think it’s best for everyone if I don’t sing,’ he said.

‘But everyone is. Even Sandor did.’

Edd looked with dolefully accusing eyes at his friend.

Sandor put his hands up. ‘Don’t look at me. If you want to kill anyone, kill Bronn.’ Missy looked at him in encouragement. ‘Single ladies, pal,’ Sandor said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ve got to do as they say.’

***

**Sansa**

‘Ahhh, he is sweet,’ said Missy, gazing at the stage.

Edd was singing Wonderwall in a quiet and marginally nasal tone whilst mostly looking at the floor.

Arya raised her eyebrows at Sansa. Sansa sniggered. Missy glanced round. ‘What? He is. He’s like, a proper soldier.’

‘He is. Robin, put that gin down,’ said Sansa, as her cousin surreptitiously slid a half-empty glass over towards him. He slid it back, looking rather guilty.

Oberyn, the crazily sexy Spanish guy she had met a couple of times, was currently sitting next to Meera and Jon, leaning forward – he had looked passionately engaged in all conversation this evening, whether it was Robin telling him about the world’s most prolific keytar players or Theon extolling the virtues of chicks-with-dicks dick-pics – and rubbing the end of one of Jon’s locks of hair between finger and thumb, whilst Meera giggled into her Tom Collins. Jon appeared rather startled.

‘He’s sex on legs, that one, isn’t he?’ Ygritte said, sitting down next to them. ‘Bloody Nora. You could strike a match off him.’

‘Better move quickly, then, before Jon makes his move,’ said Arya, snorting.

Ygritte sniffed. ‘Nah. Not my type. Bit too – you know, European. I like my men a little more pasty. For some reason.’ She trained a keen, cat-eyed gaze around the room.

Sandor was with Bronn and Robb in the corner, looking at Sansa with that dark, watchful brooding face on him. She knew he found it hard, being surrounded by people. But he’d worked at it, and found it a thousand times easier than when they had first known each other. She felt comfortable with him. She could simply not imagine being with anyone else.

‘Show us your arse!’ Ygritte shouted at the stage.

Edd’s singing tailed off. Sansa, Missy and Arya clapped him very hard, whilst he coughed and nodded, as if he’d just undertaken a special, death-defying mission on behalf of the Queen and was solemnly accepting a George Cross. 

***

**Arya**

‘Um. Can I ask a favour?’ Arya stood in front of Pod, having just danced on a different table in the name of Stark pride and beating the fuck out of Ygritte, all to the sound of Meera singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love.

He nodded and sat up slightly, looking mildly concerned. He hadn’t changed. Even before they’d been going out, he was making her bloody flapjacks and judo-chopping big dudes for her. ‘What is it?’

Arya felt more mortified than she ever had in her entire life, underneath the layer of bolshiness achieved by a day’s worth of champagne, wine and gin. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate.’

The inner edges of his eyebrows sunk by a millimetre.

‘It’s this stupid lame dares thing Ygritte’s got going. I’m doing Sansa’s dares for her.’ She folded her arms. ‘I need to get a pair of men’s boxer shorts,’ she said, before remembering extremely clearly that he didn’t wear boxer shorts. ‘Underwear.’ She blushed. ‘I can’t ask anyone else. Most of them are related to me or taught me Spanish or are just really fucking miserable.’ 

He gave half-grin to his knees. ‘What do you win? If you get enough dares?’

‘Kudos. Massive loads of sisterly kudos.’ She bit her lip.

His eyes were still the loveliest thing. They were more deadly than big fuck-off grenades. He blinked a smile. ‘Give me a sec.’ He got up and went to the Gents.

Arya watched the little stage from their booth, trying not to think about Pod taking his trousers off. Ygritte was belting out Wild Thing (she had already sung Livin’ On A Prayer and Shot Through The Heart) and pointing in a passive-aggressive fashion at Robb. Or Theon. It was hard to tell. 

Pod came back and put his scrunched-up pants in her hand. ‘I probably need them back at some point,’ he said, lightly.

Arya held them up at Ygritte, who stuck two fingers up at her and started doing a weird dance with one arm behind her back. ‘She is insane,’ she said. ‘But she’s from Hull.’

Pod nodded.

She was still holding his pants (navy-blue, white waistband, red constructivist-looking robots all over them). They were still warm. ‘Nice pants,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ He scratched his head and smiled faintly at his knees.

‘Been to any gigs?’ she said, because she had just complimented her ex-boyfriend and the love of her life on his pants and basically wanted to die.

‘Yeah. A few. Playing some, too.’ He looked at her. ‘I’m in a band.’

‘No shit. Really? On your synths?’

He nodded. 

‘Are you going to be famous?’

‘I think that is extremely unlikely,’ he said, gently grinning.

There was a piercing whistle from the stage. Ygritte was dangling her bra (hot pink, lacy) from her fingers and looking triumphant.

‘Shit,’ said Arya, giving Pod his pants back. ‘I am never winning this.’

***

**Jojen**

Everybody had sung, at least once, with varying degrees of conviction. Pod had impressively done all six minutes of Paranoid Android, with Robin supporting him by wailing through the 7/4 guitar bits, whilst Arya had fiddled with her drinks straw and pretended not to watch. Oberyn had sung Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime, Ygritte and his sister adding in the French and breathily orgasmic bits. Meera always went giggly and less arch after a few drinks. Jojen himself had wandered up and sung Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright, all the while taking illicit but very stylish puffs on his own roll-up, imagining himself in some Greenwich Village hangout in the 1960s and not a raucous karaoke bar in 21st-century Brighton.

Things seemed to be winding to a close, with talk of moving on, though Arya seemed adamant that they all had to stay a bit longer, telling people not to rush their drinks, which was entirely out of character. 

Jon was just sitting down after singing Kings of the Wild Frontier – Meera had painted two stripes on his cheeks and across his nose with lipstick, to make him even more girlishly adorable. Oberyn seemed rather taken with him, which at least took the pressure off Jojen. Ygritte was now belting out Cherry Pie to almost no one’s attention.

‘Hello.’

Everyone turned to look at the new waiter who was standing in the opening of their room. He was massive, Sandor-sized almost, and had a well impressive ginger beard. ‘I have a message for Sansa Stark,’ he said in a moorland-thick Scandinavian accent, like he should be on Wallander or The Bridge or something. 

‘Oh, that’s me,’ said Sansa merrily, sitting up and taking her hand off Sandor’s knee, before looking round at everyone. ‘Maybe it’s from Jeyne.’ She looked back up expectantly. 

The waiter removed one of his braces.

‘Jesus fuck, no,’ said Sandor.

‘What?’ said Sansa. 

Arya snorted loudly into her drink.

‘Yes!’ shouted Ygritte from nearer the stage. ‘That is what I am talking about!’

The huge - and actually divertingly sexy in an I-fight-bears, survivalist way - waiter was unbuttoning his shirt. Sansa had her hand over her mouth and had gone rather wide-eyed.

‘How did he know to come here?’ said Meera.

‘I messaged him,’ said Arya, looking pretty pleased with herself. 

‘You are dead meat, you little shit,’ said Sandor.

‘What?’ she said, with all the faux-innocence Jojen had always loved her for. ‘I had to organise something for her. She’s my sister.’

‘This is nothing to do with me,’ said Meera to Jon, who had stopped singing and was looking a little forlorn, before she erupted into giggles.

Sandor put his hand over Sansa’s eyes. ‘Don’t get any ideas, woman.’ Sansa leant slightly away from him to look as the ginger waiter entirely removed his shirt, revealing an extremely healthy amount of red-haired chest. Bran glanced over at Jojen, his eyes widening ever-so-slightly. It was a bit different from watching arty porn together.

Oberyn was sitting up rather straighter, his eyes keen as a buzzard’s. ‘All bodies are beautiful, Sandor. We should celebrate them.’

‘Oh my days,’ said Missy.

Sandor now had his other hand over Robin’s eyes and was ordering him not to look on pain of death.

‘You know,’ said Bronn to Arya. ‘Some of us might not want to see a man’s bollocks.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Jojen, folding his arms, already studying him with a keen (let’s say artist’s) eye as the waiter removed his trousers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  **   
>  PICSET!   
>    
> 
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> POTENTIAL SERIES WEEKEND KARAOKE PLAYLIST BONUS!  
>  Bronn – [You Can Leave Your Hat On by Tom Jones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGBvbrXNjs0)  
> Sandor – [I Won’t Dance by Frank Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGBvbrXNjs0)  
> Jon – [You Only Live Twice by Nancy Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs8uYxTJ530) and [Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hEn_rEDzp0)  
> Robin – [Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW_7XBrDBAA)  
> Robb – [Wicked Game by Chris Isaak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3Nl1GZzuw)  
> Missy – [No Scrubs by TLC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM)  
> Bran – [Stronger by Kanye West](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsO6ZnUZI0g)  
> Sansa – [Crazy in Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwtNLUqkMY) and [Single Ladies by Beyoncé](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY)  
> Arya – [Rehab by Amy Winehouse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUmZp8pR1uc) (but she would have much rather done [Husbands by Savages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmJ_mcvRQsI).)  
> Theon – [I’m Bringing Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gOHvDP_vCs)  
> Edd - [Wonderwall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx1Bh8ZvH84)  
> Ygritte – [Wild Thing by The Troggs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qHX493bB3U), [Livin’ On A Prayer by Bon Jovi, Shot Through The Heart by Bon Jovi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk), [Cherry Pie by Warrant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjyZKfdwlng)  
> Pod – [Paranoid Android by Radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPLEbAVjiLA)  
> Oberyn – [Je T’Aime by Serge Gainsbourg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA)  
> Jojen – [Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5CLmflrwIA)  
> Meera – [Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6D_BAuYCI)
> 
> **  
> **  
> NOTES AND TING  
>  Klaus Nomi = avant-garde German countertenor. Extremely high-art, haha. Check out [his version of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xlAJN3Hv8)
> 
> Central St Martin’s is an art school in London.
> 
> NHS = National Health Service


	4. Dancing

**Arya**

‘Oh my god. So jokes,’ said Arya, as they all walked along the front, having piled out of the karaoke bar in some hysteria.

The big red-headed stripper had got down to his pants, which were a sort of leather-Viking vibe (Arya didn’t really know if Vikings wore pants, but if they had, they would definitely be like this guy’s), before Sandor called a very definite halt to proceedings by standing up and taking Ygritte’s microphone away. Ygritte had insisted on accompanying his routine by singing ‘Red-Headed Woman’ by Bruce Springsteen, with particular, raw-voiced emphasis on the lines ‘it takes a red-headed woman to get a dirty job done.’ 

It had been totally hilarious. The guy had gyrated as close to Sansa’s face as he could get without Sandor punching him. Arya had never seen such a ridiculously massive, basically starkers dude, her narrow experience of real-life naked men being rather more compact, and considerably less hairy. The man’s front had been like an overgrown lawn. A ginger lawn. Jojen and Bran had been pretty bright-eyed about the whole thing. Sandor’s moody soldier friend had mostly looked at the ceiling. Bronn had folded his arms and shaken his head, and yet seemed happy enough to watch, really. Maybe just to learn some moves to do for his next Tom Jones song. Urgh.

‘You have got some bloody nerve,’ said Sandor, walking next to Arya.

‘Just be glad we didn’t make _you_ strip,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens on stag dos,’ she said to Sandor. ‘You’ve got off well lightly.’ She made her voice more daggery. ‘So far.’ 

‘Aren’t they normally a bit, like, not so hairy?’ said Missy, just behind them. ‘Magic Mike type stuff?’

‘Yeah, most of them are all One Direction and shit, you know, like Jon -’ Jon looked over with a sort of delicately woeful bemusement. ‘But Sansa likes gross big beardy blokes. So I did my research and got him from beardsandbearsstrip.com. Boom. One giant ginger-nut at your service.’’ 

Meera burst out laughing for the twenty-fifth time that evening.

Sandor gave a very heavy, ragged sigh, like a lion beginning his twentieth day of torture. ‘Jesus wept.’

‘I didn’t mind,’ said Sansa, who was on the other side of Sandor, holding his hand.

‘You liked that, did you?’ he said to her. 

Excellent. It was fun to stir shit up a bit.

‘It was funny,’ she said, in her best innocent-sister tones, while he glared at her. ‘It _was_ funny.’

Meera was hanging off Jon’s arm in fits of giggles. 

‘Aye, well, I’m glad you all find it so fucking hilarious,’ Sandor said, and Arya could just about hear the extremely reluctant scrape of wryness on his voice. ‘I’m not going to get rid of that image for a bloody long time.’

‘Shhh,’ said Sansa. ‘He’ll hear you.’

They looked round again, to where Oberyn was at the back of the group deep in conversation with Tormund, having invited him to join them for the rest of the evening, after discreetly folding a few notes into his hand, of course.

***

**Jojen**

‘What’s the plan, then?’ Jojen popped another chip into his mouth, the whole group having stopped at a van to soak up the gin, and with Bran’s crutches propped under his arms.

‘Well, we were gonna go to this club under the arches that’s like a funfair, but we can’t what with Cousin It in tow,’ said Arya, crunching on a bit of fish batter.

‘It’s ok!’ said Robin, brightly, hopping up just behind them. ‘I can get in. Jojen only looks about fourteen, anyway.’

‘Hmm,’ said Jojen.

‘No,’ said Sandor. ‘Not happening. Where the fuck are you all sleeping, anyway?’

‘We thought we could work it out with you guys,’ said Bran.

Sandor muttered several curses beautifully and copiously under his breath.

Ygritte was suddenly leaning halfway over Jojen’s shoulder, stealing a chip. ‘Mad for it,’ she said, apropos of nothing. ‘Can’t stop yet. I need to dance my arse off. These are good.’ She took another one. ‘Not as good as Humberside, mind, but they’re alright.’

Jojen put the collar of his jacket up. It was a bit icy. 

‘Not cold, are you?’ She nudged him. ‘You big southern jessie. This is fucking tropical.’ She gazed more shrewdly at he and Bran, with the sort of look she probably gave to patients asking for morphine, or underage kids in the pub. ‘You two are bloody cute, aren’t you? Like an arty Ant and Dec. I’d take you two home to meet me mam. How old are you anyway, fifteen?’

‘Nineteen,’ said Jojen.

‘Ahhh,’ said Ygritte, leaning forward. ‘Little baby-faced cherub. You don’t look a day over -’

‘I know,’ said Jojen, doing his best to give her a raffish, not-at-all-bothered squint, whilst feeling rather affronted. 

Ygritte looked along the coastline, towards the West Pier. ‘What’s going on over there?’ 

***

**Sansa**

Brighton had two piers. One was very much in keeping with the modern British seaside tradition of garish fun palace, a mecca for children to run riot and the elderly to sit on deckchairs reading tabloid newspapers whilst watching the world go by. Bumper cars, a haunted house, candy floss, marching bands. They’d had a laugh earlier in the day on the arcades, Arya going down a storm on Guitar Hero and Meera winning a handbag full of coppers.

The West Pier had been rather the same, once upon a time, before it burnt down fifteen years ago. It now stood, skeletal against the dark sky, with flocks of starlings gathering round it as all of them traipsed over to where there was a biggish tent erected on the flatter part of the pebble beach nearest the road, with lights, a DJ and lots of people dancing. 

‘Awesome,’ said Missy, just in front, turning round. ‘It’s going off.’

A slinky 1940s gown was totally not the outfit for outdoor clubbing but it was too magical not to be drawn in, a Sansa-moth to a hippie Brighton flame.

‘You’ll catch your death,’ said Sandor. 

‘Not if I _dance_ ,’ said Sansa. ‘Not if _you_ dance.’

‘I just want to be in bed,’ said Sandor grumpily, stretching his shoulders out. He hadn’t quite forgiven her for not keeping her eyes shut the _entire_ time during the striptease. 

‘Not yet,’ she said, putting her hands underneath his shirt, finding the warm skin of his sides. ‘In a bit.’ She ran the back of her hand over the hair of his belly. He probably had even more hair than the striptease guy anyway, she thought, grinning. No competition, really.

He brought his arms down and she loved how she could still him with just the lightest touch. ‘Aye, ok,’ he said, in a voice not far off the sound of the sea dragging on the pebbles.

‘Yay,’ she said, leaning up to kiss him on his smooth cheek and pulling him towards the makeshift bar.

It _was_ brilliant. It was a little festival to celebrate the anniversary of an AIDS charity, and though it was cold, the music was an awesome mix of house and reggae and pop stuff, and everyone around them seemed cheerful and not angry on coke or anything. It was all much better than doing hen dares.

Tormund, who had donned a big woolly jumper, told her in an incredibly unselfconscious, non-seductive manner in his rich Danish accent about the survivalist courses he led on the South Downs, alongside the extra cash he made in his ‘other profession,’ as he sanguinely put it. Sandor was glaring at her the entire time.

Sansa kept an eye on Arya and Pod, who seemed to be talking, if not exactly dancing. She wanted to be ready to help her, however she needed it. To swoop in, superhero-sister style. Most of the others were dancing, even Bran, just about, with the aid of a crutch and Jojen supporting him. Missy was pointing her plastic gun at Edd and gently firing. He looked rather nonplussed, before putting his hands up, and she blew over the top of the gun in crazy-cute style. Bronn was half-dancing and chatting to some of the charity workers and Oberyn seemed to be buying drinks for everyone. Ygritte was snogging Robb quite flagrantly in the middle of the tent and had her hands under his t-shirt whilst Theon was looking at the roof of the tent and pretending not to be annoyed. 

Robin was – actually, Sansa couldn’t see Robin. She went to the front of the tent and did a quick scan of the darkened beach, the wind slashing her hair across her face. He was liable to wander off a little, singing things to himself but always with the hope that someone would notice him working on his genius, so he’d never go far. She wandered back in, where Ygritte was now snogging Theon whilst Robb looked at the roof of the tent.

‘Where’s Robin?’ she shouted in Arya’s ear.

‘What?’ shouted Arya. 

Sansa yelled it again, rather more loudly, so that even Pod heard and looked around for him immediately.

They did a circuit of the tent, Arya dancing her way round, Sansa’s heart beginning to rise to meet the DJ’s beats – Robin surely wouldn’t be hard to spot, what with the bowler hat – before Arya turned and put her hands up. ‘Shit,’ her sister shouted.

***

**Sandor**

‘Bloody wonderful,’ Sandor said.

The little brat wasn’t anywhere. Bronn and Pod had quickly done a recce of the nearest bit of beach and asked around a bit.

Sandor jabbed a finger at Jojen. ‘This is your fault.’ And at Bran, who looked a little solemn at being told off. ‘And yours.’

‘He’s his own boss,’ said Jojen, slotting another cigarette into his mouth. Did he ever fucking stop? 

Sandor really wanted to swipe it himself. ‘He’s thirteen fucking years old.’ And acted like a ten year old. Or a fifty year old. ‘Three years older than being ten. He’s a child. Fuck’s sake.’

‘We’ll find him,’ said Bronn, patting him on the shoulder. ‘You can’t miss that boy.’

Sandor shook his head. It would be the perfect end to this weird weekend, having Robin bloody drown in the Channel or something. 

Bronn was sorting everyone out into search parties. ‘You stay here in case he comes back,’ he told Sansa and Sandor. ‘Plenty of us to go round. No need to panic yet.’

Sandor folded his arms and watched the whole bloody motley crew go off in different directions. Edd, Missy, Robb and Ygritte along the beach, Bronn, Theon, Meera and Jon towards the East Pier, Pod and Arya directly up into town, Jojen and Bran along the front, and Oberyn and Tormund further west. 

The two of them sat down on a bench right by the tent entrance. ‘Christ,’ he said, feeling really bloody knackered. ‘They shouldn’t have brought him.’ He would kill that skinny artshit later.

‘I know,’ said Sansa, shivering like a little animal next to him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’ But he couldn’t help shaking his head. There was a pain in his chest that wasn’t just over Robin, a dark smear of frustration. 

‘What is it?’

‘It’s just – we’re in different worlds.’ He looked at her, at her high colour, how she wasn’t really tired yet, the brightness in her eyes behind the worry. ‘You’re all so bloody young.’

‘Don’t say that. It doesn’t matter.’ Another shiver. 

He should have been putting his arm round her right now, but he couldn’t. Instead, he just shook his head again, staring out to sea. It did matter. Not always, not most of the time, but sometimes he felt like an old man, surrounded by all these madcap twenty-somethings and teenagers. That would never change. He’d only ever feel older. He was moving more slowly than her. How did she not see it, or not care?

‘Sandor,’ she said, quietly, not quite a question. She knew the thoughts were raging in his head. She knew him too bloody well.

The music thumped away and he felt it rattle in his ribcage. He wouldn’t say it. He should say it. Before it was too late. He should say the words that plagued him when he looked at her sometimes. I’m too old for you. I’m not good enough for you. You can’t. I can’t. 

She was looking at him. ‘If you need to tell me something, say it now. You know what I think. You know what I’ve always thought. We’re just – it’s you and me. There’s no one else. There’ll never be anyone else. I’m not –’ she stopped, but he knew already what she’d been about to say, and she saw that. He knew her just as well as she knew him. ‘I’m not like Arya,’ she said, carefully, ashamed at the judgement of her sister. ‘Like she was last year. I have confidence in us.’

His mouth was dry. All this wind and salt. ‘I don’t want to hold you back.’ A huge breath. He hated sounding defeatist, and like a fucking child. 

‘You won’t. We just have to always keep talking about it. I never want you to be unhappy.’

‘You don’t know what’ll happen in the future,’ he said. 

‘No one knows what’s going to happen in the future,’ Sansa said, her voice becoming tight. He could hear how hurt she was. ‘If you think that, you’ll never do anything.’ She looked out to the barely-visible waves smashing on the pebbles.

There’s better than me, he thought. You just haven’t met him yet. He turned to her, and took her hand. Took a deep breath. ‘There’s –’ 

‘Um, Sansa?’ Her friend Jeyne was to the side of them, and her hands were on Robin’s shoulders. ‘This is your cousin, right?’

Sansa stood up. ‘Oh my god. _Robin_. Where have you _been_?’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Sandor said, the words he had been about to say disappearing like sea-foam in the wind. ‘Thank Christ.’ He stood too, his stomach slowly unclenching.

The boy was looking wide-eyed and rather sleepy. Sandor resisted the urge to take him by his shoulders and shake him until every single poncey musical thought fell out of his brain. 

‘Um, I was totally on my way to you?’ Jeyne said, pretty bloody unconvincingly in Sandor’s humble opinion, and in that utterly annoying questioning tone. ‘I met these nice guys and we went to this place, Legends Hotel?' She twisted a bunch of wind-knotted blonde hair in her fingers like a five year old. 'So anyway, I found him on the terrace, chatting to one of the drag acts.’

‘Robin,’ said Sansa, with a light sense of disbelief. ‘Were you in a gay club?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe?’ he said, borrowing Jeyne’s question mark speech.

‘You are in such fucking trouble,’ Sandor said, pointing a finger, trying to ignore the tension in his ribs of his own making.

Robin pulled a big sorry face. 

***

**Arya**

‘They found him,’ she said to Pod, showing him Sansa’s message. ‘God. That boy.’

Pod smiled, his hands in his pockets. ‘That’s ok, then.’

‘Yeah.’ They carried on wandering up the street, not talking, and she was utterly aware of his shape in that nice coat he was wearing, and the distance between them. Looking for Robin had given them a focus. Now it just felt awkward again. 

‘Do you want to hear my band?’ he said, suddenly.

‘Yeah,’ she said, relieved. ‘Totally.’

He gave her a headphone and they walked, more slowly and a little closer together. The track was more rock-based than she might have imagined, but she could pick out his stuff, the crazy squelches and bangs in the background, making it all a bit weirder and more Pod-ish.

She gave him back his headphone when the track finished. ‘It’s really cool.’ I’m proud of you, she thought.

‘You don’t have to pretend,’ he said, with a tiny smile.

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Honest.’ She stopped on the corner of a street and pointed. ‘That one’s mine.’

Arya had been leading him this way on purpose. She’d shown him a couple of photos of her street art on her phone earlier on, and now gestured to a brick wall that made up the side of a health food shop. They’d let her do it, even given her free flapjacks for the week. Her style was naïve, cartoonish, but with dark, fairytale qualities. This one was a girl being led into the woods, a great shadow, her hair flying out in tendrils and becoming trees.

They stood looking at it as a group of guys moved in front of them, shouting something about football. 

‘It’s really good, Arya,’ Pod said.

It was the first time he’d said her name. She had a pain like a bee-sting in her gut. ‘Thanks,’ she managed to say, staring at the wall, seeing the place she should have covered with more dark green. Another deep black line.

He stood looking at it. ‘I’m glad you’re – doing well.’

I’m not, she thought. Not completely. ‘Thanks,’ she said again, and scuffed her toes against the kerb. ‘I liked your singing. Before.’ She had always liked that Radiohead song. He used to air-guitar all the tricky bits for her.

He just smiled at her and looked at the wall again.

‘What’s she like?’ Arya said, because she was incapable of keeping her mouth shut like a normal person.

He didn’t need to ask who she meant. Took a breath and looked out towards the beach. The wind flicked the front of his hair up. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘She kickboxes.’

Of course she fucking does, Arya thought. She hadn’t done any more fencing since she’d moved to Brighton. The two of them probably wrestled each other in only half their clothes before it turned into sexy fucking. She felt sick. ‘Cool,’ she said.

Pod looked at the ground. 

***

**Sansa**

‘Bed,’ said Sandor, in the sort of voice that meant that arguing with him was as pointless as attempting to walk any further in these heels. 

She was wiped now anyway. The Robin-stress and, to be honest, preceding Sandor-stress, had taken away her need for dancing. ‘Can I come back with you?’ she said, her voice quiet. They were near the East Pier again now, the tinny sounds of the night-time rides floating over.

‘Aye,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Of course.’ 

She still felt bruised. To have him say all that now, when the wedding was so close. It scared her. She was still shaking, and it wasn’t just the cold. 

‘Jojen and Bran can come back to ours,’ said Meera, as Pod and Arya rejoined them.

‘It’s a bit late to go to my mate’s now,’ Pod was saying quietly to Arya, looking at his watch. 

‘Stay at ours, too, then,’ said Meera. ‘I mean –’ she glanced at Arya with a flash of apology. ‘Maybe.’

Pod looked at her. 

‘Yeah,’ said Arya, quite flatly, as a little bit of Sansa’s heart snapped off for her. ‘There’s loads of room.’ 

‘Thanks,’ he said, very quietly. 

‘You little adventurer,’ said Ygritte to Robin, bashing him lightly on the head, as Robb, Missy and Edd came up behind her. Missy had Edd’s jacket round her shoulders. ‘What are you like, you bloody tyke?’

Robin gave her a sleepily pleased beam before looking guiltily at Sandor. 

‘Like an attention-seeking little shit who’s getting grounded until hell freezes over,’ Sandor said.

‘Can’t go to bed without doing one more thing, mind,’ Ygritte said, stretching and waving as a slim shadow became Jojen and a wheeled one Bran, slowly joining them.

‘I’m not licking a stranger’s chest,’ said Sansa. ‘I’m too tired. I’m done.’ She wanted to curl up in a big bed with the man that she wanted to be her husband. She wanted him to want her too. 

‘You’re not bloody shaving my beard off or making me take one shred of my clothes off either,’ said Sandor.

‘No,’ said Ygritte, in her deliciously drawn-out Hull accent. ‘I’m resigned to the fact that you lot are boring fucking bastards.’ She stood facing the sea. ‘I’m not, though.’ She took her leather jacket off and dropped it right there on the pavement. And began walking towards the sea, wriggling out of her ripped t-shirt.

‘Like, where is she going?’ said Jeyne, who looked pretty unhappy still that she’d had to find them all and would much rather be back in that gay club.

‘Oh man,’ said Robb, before starting to go after her, taking his shoes off and hobbling over the stones.

‘Wait up!’ Theon followed.

‘Her hen dares have gone off the scale,’ said Meera.

Jojen watched for a moment, before ambling slowly after them, turning round and walking backwards so that he could give Bran an assured grin and a wink. 

Sandor was staring after them, as the bodies became paler and their clothes scattered on the pebbles. The darkness gathered around them softly, lights from the pier giving them an eerie glow. He glanced at Sansa. ‘Going in?’ Awkwardness still in his voice. What had he been going to say to her, before Jeyne interrupted him?

‘I’ll ruin the dress,’ she said. ‘It’s on hire.’ As well as the fact that she would probably freeze out there and die. 

‘ _You’re_ not going anywhere,’ Sandor said to Robin, who slid his feet back towards the two of them, looking a little disappointed. 

There was a shriek from the tide-edge as Ygritte went into the water. An even higher one as Robb followed. Theon sounded like he was being horribly tortured.

Next to Bran, Bronn was taking his jacket off. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Sandor to him. 

‘Fuck it,’ said Bronn. ‘I’ve got to represent West Yorkshire, haven’t I? Humberside is harder, my arse.’ He gave a wryly resigned smile, and jogged over the stones towards the sea.

***

**Arya**

Arya and Pod lay facing each other on the floor, on various sofa cushions and with blankets, a couple of feet of space between them. She had given Bran and a lightly shivering Jojen her bed – it didn’t do Bran much good to sleep on the floor, though he had protested. Jon was with Meera in her room, and Jeyne in hers, though she still seemed pissed off to have to have joined them all again, like the weirdo she was. They’d lost Missy, and had been getting worried until she had texted Arya something about an officer and a gentleman and said everything was safe, which hopefully also meant that she was _actually_ safe. And Ygritte, slightly mortifyingly, had sauntered into her own double room with Robb. And Theon. 

Orange light filtered in through the blinds, and there were seagulls sounding like Bristol hen parties outside. Arya’s skin felt like glue and her breathing was dead shallow. The last time she and Pod had slept together was the night before Lysa’s wedding. Though that was a different sort of sleeping together.

‘Did you have a good night?’ she said, quietly.

‘Yeah.’ She could hear him blinking. ‘It was nice to see people again.’ He didn’t say her. 

She didn’t know what else to say. She could think of a million things. The air was heavy and thick and shredded thin at once. 

A thump and a muffled shriek from Ygritte’s room.

‘Oh God,’ said Arya. ‘This is not happening.’

‘I think it is.’

‘It’s my brother in there. My fucking _brother_.’ A stage whisper. ‘ _Fucking_.’

Pod let out the tiniest laugh, a breath through his nose. She had always loved making him laugh. Telling him the lamest jokes. Pulling stupid faces or jumping on his back.

‘I miss you,’ she said.

Pod didn’t say anything. He seemed to have stopped breathing. 

She should apologise for saying that. She wouldn’t apologise. ‘All you have to say is that you don’t miss me.’

He still didn’t say anything.

It was as if she’d cracked through ice, telling him. Cold water words coming slowly. ‘It’s like -’ she rolled over onto her back. ‘It’s like there’s a part of me that wants to fuck myself up. That’s what Sandor always said, before I met you. There’s a tiny button in my brain that’s always there, just waiting for me to press it again. I’ve been working really hard to get rid of it. On my own, this time.’

She glanced at him, and could just see a tiny bit of light reflected from the streetlights outside in his eyes. 

‘I know it was all me,’ she said. ‘You didn’t do anything. I think I was so sure I was going to lose you that I – I don’t know, part of me thought I’d hurry it up a bit. I know that’s no excuse.’ She didn’t care anymore. Nothing she could say would make it any worse. ‘No one’s like you, Podrick. No one makes me feel like you do. I’ve tried, but – it’s not the same.’

There was a click in his throat as he swallowed. ‘No one’s like you, either.’ Said in the same Pod-voice as ever, utterly simple and neutral, and with no grand gestures afterwards. He stayed very still, and he didn’t say another word.

Arya felt desperately, crushingly sad. It was over. It would always be over.

***

**Sandor**

It was far too hot in this room. Sandor pushed the covers down to his legs. Stupid bloody budget hotel, with traffic going past and drunk football fans lurching about on the pavement down below them. 

Sansa was lying a little apart from him, facing him, her head resting on her hands. She hadn’t said much since they’d got in. He had no idea what she was thinking.

He stared back. Dread and love and terror. 

‘You do want to do this, don’t you?’ she said, very quietly, not blinking. He pictured the words swaying out of her mouth, wandering around the room, disappearing. 

I can’t. You can’t. We can’t. 

Her lips came apart, a small, dry sound.

‘Aye,’ he said, because it was the truth. ‘I just – Christ. I still can’t quite believe that you want to.’ 

She took a breath in and he wondered what she would say next, and how their lives would change. He pictured a road, peeling in two, the parts bending away from each other. She would tell him that she’d changed her mind. That he was right. 

‘Believe it, baby,’ she said, very simply.

He wanted to weep, a little. Instead, he took the deepest breath that he’d ever taken in and smiled. ‘You’re a crazy woman.’ 

‘Crazy in love,’ she said right back. ‘Which makes you my Jay-Z.’

‘You two break my heart,’ said Robin, who was accumulating more teenagery affectations by the hour and was currently bedded down on the floor of their hotel room.

‘Go the fuck to sleep,’ said Sandor, before pulling Sansa closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  **   
>  PICSET   
> 
> 
> **  
> BRITISH SLANG NOTES FOR ALL YOU OTHER WEIRDOS**  
>  Jokes = how funny, what a joke  
> Coppers = coins! 1 and 2 pence pieces
> 
> Ant and Dec = highly beloved TV-presenting duo, grannies’ favourites, never seem to age.
> 
> Rose Leslie, aka Ygritte, totally does an East Yorkshire accent in Game of Thrones. Their ‘no’ sounds like ‘nerrrrr’ (if you say ‘nerrrr’ in a South-Eastern English accent, anyway).


	5. Fry-up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet! But with a BONUS FEATURE as the next chapter.

**Jojen**

Lovely. The sea had a soft, matte look this morning, just a shade darker than the pale sky. Turner was a cliché, but Turner it was. You could see the starlings from here outside the caff, separating and collecting in the air, like a magnet moving iron filings around. 

Jojen drew lightly on his cigarette and watched the smoke feather away. Perhaps he should try and persuade people to see a few galleries before they left. But he’d promised to get Robin home to Bristol. And he was as tired as everyone else. Definitely as tired as Ygritte, Robb and Theon looked as they sloped up to the door.

‘Morning,’ Jojen said, sipping his coffee.

‘Ugh,’ said Ygritte with all the grace of a just-resurrected zombie, pushing past him.

***

**Sansa**

‘That was an eventful night.’ Meera yawned, massively.

‘Yeah,’ said Sansa, clutching her chipped little china cup of tea. ‘I’m officially henned-up. Henned-out.’

Meera clinked her own china cup against Sansa’s. ‘Hooray,’ she said, very lightly, before glancing over at Jon, who was at the counter of the café asking detailed questions about milk alternatives. 

‘Are you guys ok?’ Sansa asked. They’d seemed a little morose this morning.

‘Yeah,’ said Meera, picking open her croissant. ‘I just had to tell him that I’d always prefer him stripping than a big beardy ginger man. And then I had to clarify that I only wanted him to strip for me and not for anyone else. Basically, we talked quite a lot about stripping.’ She grinned.

‘I’m going to get you back for that,’ Sandor said to Arya, taking a massive bite of his bacon butty and talking with his mouth full, his arm slung on the back of Sansa’s chair. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ 

Things seemed different this morning. Better. Sandor didn’t have that haunted look any more. 

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Arya, who was leaning so far over on her elbow she seemed practically asleep, but was still managing to dip a chip into her fried egg. ‘Talk to the hand, bro.’

The door made an alarmingly high scraping sound as more of their party arrived for their agreed brunch meeting. Ygritte was looking appallingly hungover. 

Arya bit her lip, chewing away a grin. She’d already told her sister of Ygritte’s bedroom guests, and Sansa was having a very hard time not getting various unwelcome images out of her brain. Sandor had put his hands over his ears before downing his first filter coffee and immediately ordering a second one.

Robb and Theon sat down at opposite ends of the table and looked with great concentration at menus.

‘Now then, you lot,’ Ygritte said, promptly ordering a full English and a pot of tea with two teabags. Her voice had sunk to the level of a whisky-drinking Yorkshire farmer. ‘Grand night, eh?’ Ygritte was a trouper.

‘Mmm- _hmm_ ,’ said Sansa, rather meaningfully, causing Robb to look up from his menu and very quickly down again.

Jojen came back in, joining Bran who was reading yesterday’s paper and talking to Bronn. Robin was drinking a very large banana milkshake and tapping rhythms out on the table, stopping every time Sandor glared at him. Jeyne had taken off in the morning, saying she was going to have coffee with one of her new gay clubbing friends, and would see them on the train.

‘Worst friend everrrr,’ said Arya. ‘You should bounce her from bridesmaid duties.’

‘You’re my only bridesmaid, Arya,’ Sansa said.

‘Oh yeah.’ She looked at her. ‘Cool.’

‘Always, sis.’ Sansa gave her what she hoped was a warm, sympathetic smile. Pod had to get back to London, Arya had said, and Sansa wasn’t entirely sure what had happened between them. But, given her sister’s muted grey eyes, it didn’t seem to be good. 

Missy drifted in - with Edd, just behind her, looking very steadfastly anywhere but at their group. 

‘Morning, lovers,’ she said, sliding into a seat next to Sansa as Bronn slapped a hand on Edd’s back at the counter.

‘We were worried,’ Sansa said, gently sliding her elbow into Missy’s.

‘No need,’ Missy said, in her skinny-latte-froth voice.

‘Oh my god,’ said Arya, not really lowering her voice enough. ‘You totally slept with Captain Sensible.’

‘I did not, actually.’ She propped her head of inordinately luscious (and, as bedhead hair, somehow even more sexy) curls on her hand and leaned over the café table. ‘We just had a long walk along the beach and it was starting to get light and his hotel was loads nearer. Like, basically right there. He let me sleep on the bed and he had the chair. He was very gentlemanly, I will have you know.’ 

‘What, so nothing happened?’

‘Nope.’ She looked over, subtly and just a little wistfully. 

The door squeaked loudly open again, to the robust wincing of Ygritte, who put her hand to her head. Oberyn, looking like the perfect epitome of 1930s Spain with his sunglasses and his shirt a little too wide given the typically inclement weather, wafted through the door. ‘Good morning, my comrades,’ he said in the voice of a monk in an abbey. He sat down next to Ygritte. 

‘Where did you bugger off to, then?’ said Bronn. ‘Or maybe I don’t want to know.’

‘I took a little tour of the town,’ said Oberyn, looking over his shades at the egg yolk-flecked menu with polite distaste and more warmly up at the stout waitress staring wide-eyed at him. ‘A double espresso, darling, thank you. A little sugar. Just a little.’ He glanced at Bronn. ‘It’s a diverting little place, this, no?’

‘Something like that, pal,’ said Bronn.

‘Hell _ooo_ ,’ said Ygritte, drawing out the word in a long groan and leaning into him.

‘Hello, my northern sweetness,’ said Oberyn, putting a generous arm around her and pulling a newspaper over.

‘You’re nice,’ she said in a croak. ‘Spanish.’

‘I am,’ he murmured with just a whisper of off-handedness as he turned a page.

His hair was as dark as the espresso that the blushing waitress set down in front of him, so that Sansa could not help but notice the stray, coarse ginger hair that curled from the side of his head and that was definitely not Ygritte’s.

***

**Arya**

‘No Podrick?’ Missy asked, rather gently, sitting next to her on the train.

Arya shook her head. They’d hugged on the doorstep on the apartment first thing this morning and she’d wanted to hold onto him forever. It had been horrible. And wonderful. And horrible. 

‘Sorry, bae.’

‘It’s no thing.’ It was every bloody thing.

Missy lay her head on Arya’s shoulder. She didn’t quite seem her brightest self either. 

‘’Sup?’ said Arya.

Missy didn’t lift her head. ‘Oh, nothing. Just wiped. Need my beauty sleep.’ Arya wondered how that could possibly make her look any hotter than she did. If she wasn’t so incredibly nice she would hate her. Missy sighed again.

‘You know you’re going to see him again, don’t you?’ said Arya. She couldn’t for the life imagine what Missy would see in a miserable older army dude, but then Grey had always been a bit serious, too. 

‘How do you know? Have you gone psychic on me?’

‘Because he’s coming to the wedding in two weeks, shit-for-brains.’ 

Missy lifted her head and gazed out of the window at the blurred hedgerows. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said, rather softly, before thunking her head back down. ‘Safe.’

***

**Jojen**

‘That was the best weekend I have ever had,’ said Robin dreamily, looking out of the train window. ‘It was so savage.’

‘Preach, mate,’ said Jojen, quite quietly, as Bran was dozing on his shoulder. ‘Now we just have to make sure Lysa still thinks you’ve been at Caspar’s house in Bristol learning plainchant or whatever it is you two get up to.’

‘Early music is over for me,’ said Robin. ‘I need to get a band together. Like Pod’s. But like, loads of guitars and effects pedals and big Hammond organ solos.’ He gazed out of the window. ‘I’ve got a name for it already.’

‘Hit me,’ said Jojen, rolling up a cigarette that he would place between his teeth the very second he stepped off the train. 

‘Sweetrobin and the Vale,’ he said. 

‘Sound,’ said Jojen.

***

**Sandor**

The hills became fields, the fields gardens, and then container yards and JCBs were streaking past. The edges of the city coming in. 

‘Yay, London,’ said Sansa, sleepily, her head resting on his shoulder. 

‘Mmm,’ said Sandor. He put his chin on top of her hair, moved his cheek down to feel its softness. More than anything, he bloody loved her hair. 

‘Yay for our joint stag and hen weekend like a proper modern couple,’ she said.

‘Mmm,’ said Sandor, already wanting to forget large parts of it. 

‘Yay for our upcoming wedding. To each other,’ she said, lifting her head up and looking at him in that assured, carefully questioning way.

Sandor looked out at the grey clouds and the grey city. Fuck it. This was happening. There was no going back. ‘Aye,’ he said, and gave her a slow smile.

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  PICSET  
>  **
> 
> **FINAL part of the series coming very soon, haha. It’s basically all written already. You can probably guess what’s coming next. DEATH AND TORTURE. BATTLE SCENES. ANGST AND HORROR.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Or, possibly, more tooth-rotting nonsense.**


	6. BONUS FEATURE: THE MR AND MRS QUIZ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three weeks ago, Meera sent Sandor an email asking him to fill in his part of the Mr and Mrs Quiz for the hen weekend. She politely sent him another email a week later, and another one the week after that, which he finally replied to, first with the words 'do I have to?' and secondly 'if you buy me a pint.' Sansa answered some of these questions on her hen weekend but loved it so much that she asked Meera to send her the entire quiz and diligently filled in all her answers (obviously without looking at Sandor's answers) and then then looked at Sandor's answers and marked herself. She was pleased with her results.

**THE MR AND MRS QUIZ**

_1.Who is the smartest?_  
Sandor: Sansa. Please note for the record that I am doing this under duress.  
Sansa: He would say me but it is not true because he can do the Times Cryptic Crossword which is a total mystery to me

 _2\. Who has the best sense of humour?_  
Sandor: Even stevens.  
Sansa: Not sure. Me!

 _3\. Who is the kindest?_  
Sandor: Sansa.  
Sansa: Sandor, but he would say me

 _4.Who is the best with money?_  
Sandor: Me.  
Sansa: Sandor. He keeps talking about a joint account which is Very Grown Up

 _5\. Who has the best fashion sense?_  
Sandor: Are you fucking kidding me?  
Sansa: MEEEEE 

_6\. Who is better at cooking?_  
Sandor: Depends on the meal. My breakfasts are better. Her spaghetti is better. I hate this fucking game.  
Sansa: We are both very excellent. Sandor does good eggs. He can scramble my eggs any time

 _7\. Who has the worst morning breath?_  
Sandor: Sansa.  
Sansa: Sandorrrrrr. If he says me, I will kill him with my thighs

 _8\. Who gets their way the most?_  
Sandor: Sansa.  
Sansa: I AM THE BOSS OF HIM (wpsssshhhh)

 _9\. Who has the best job?_  
Sandor: Sansa will have the best job soon enough.  
Sansa: Sandor has an excellent job but he will say something about me

 _10\. When it comes to food, who is the fussiest?_  
Sandor: Neither of us.  
Sansa: neither of us. WE BOTH LOVE FOOD AND EACH OTHER

 _11\. Who watches the most television?_  
Sandor: Sansa.  
Sansa: Me, whoops. OITNB is my boo and also GIRLS and Great British Bake-Off

 _12\. Who is the best kisser?_  
Sandor: Both of us because we are both fucking kissing each other.  
Sansa: That is a weird question.

 _13\. Who is the most organised?_  
Sandor: Me  
Sansa: Sandor

 _14\. Who is the best with children?_  
Sandor: She’ll say me.  
Sansa: Sandor because he is awesome at his job

 _16\. Who spends the most time on social media?_  
Sandor: Take a fucking wild guess.  
Sansa: *answers in emojis*

 _17\. Who takes up the most space in the bed?_  
Sandor: Who do you bloody think?  
Sansa: HAHAHAHA

 _18\. Who takes the longest to get ready?_  
Sandor: Who do you bloody think?  
Sansa: HAHAHAHA

 _19.Who makes the best cup of tea?_  
Sandor: She makes a nice cuppa. But mine is better.  
Sansa: Sandor and that is how he won my heart

 _20\. Who has the worst temper?_  
Sandor: Me.  
Sansa: Sandor except when the tube is down and it’s raining and my phone has run out

 _21\. According to the groom, what is your best physical feature?_  
Sandor: Everything. Arse. Everything. Hair.  
Sansa: My bum. No. My hair! My hair! He loves my hair. 

_22\. According to the groom, which physical feature do you think is his best?_  
Sandor: Shoulders.  
Sansa: shoulders. Tattoo (triple YUM)

 _23\. What is his favourite sport?_  
Sandor: Football.  
Sansa: Football

 _24\. What is his favourite genre of music?_  
Sandor: Rock.  
Sansa: Rock, indie, guitar-type things

 _25\. What is his favourite car?_  
Sandor: One that works.  
Sansa: He doesn’t really care about cars, as long as it goes forward and doesn’t break down

 _26\. Does he prefer cats or dogs?_  
Sandor: Dogs.  
Sansa: Dogs. Totes dogs

_27\. What is his favourite Celebration (the sweets)?_  
Sandor: I have no fucking idea what any of them are.  
Sansa: He wouldn’t care and he would eat all of them 

__28\. What is his ideal holiday destination?__  
Sandor: Scotland  
Sansa: Scotland EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT WARM ☺ 

__29\. What is his favourite thing to do with you?__  
Sandor: Unrepeatable.  
Sansa: That would be telling 

__30\. Who is his best friend ever?__  
Sandor: Bronn, I suppose. These questions are stupid. I’m not a fucking girl.  
Sansa: Bronny bronn bronn. It is a beautiful bromance 

__31\. What is his favourite sports person?__  
Sandor: Jim Thompson, Queen of the South.  
Sansa: The one from Queen of the South who was there for ages and was the captain. But he likes that Leicester one, too. Jaime Vardy. I know a footballer! 

__32\. What does he prefer, Facebook or Twitter?__  
Sandor: Spare me.  
Sansa: He resists social media ☺☺☺ 

__33\. What is his favourite flavour of ice-cream?__  
Sandor: Chocolate.  
Sansa: Chocolate 

__34\. What is his favourite clothing brand?__  
Sandor: I really don’t fucking care.  
Sansa: I would like to see him in more Ted Baker shirts because they DO fit him but I do not think he is bothered. I don’t think he will have liked these questions 

__35\. What is his favourite thing about himself?__  
Sandor: Being a big fucker, I don’t know.  
Sansa: His height and working with disadvantaged children 

__36\. What is his favourite music artist/band?__  
Sandor: Led Zeppelin.  
Sansa: Led Zeppelin 

__37\. What is his favourite sport to play?__  
Sandor: Five-a-side football. In goal.  
Sansa: Football! He goes to Peckham Rye on Sunday mornings and it’s dead cute 

__38\. When driving, what is choice of radio station?__  
Sandor: XFM.  
SansaL XFM or Radio 4 

__39\. What is his favourite flavour of crisps?__  
Sandor: Roast chicken. Can I go now?  
Sansa: Roast chicken NOW AND FOREVER 


End file.
